Meatless Monday: Vegan goodies at Happy Chicks

Those happy chicks, Jana Douglass and Jessica Bechtel, have made the move from their home -based business to a storefront in Northside. They've opened their retail Happy Chicks Bakery location on Hamilton Avenue, where Take the Cake used to be.

It's where they make and sell vegan pastries: cookies, cakes and cupcakes, pie, tarts, brownies, coffeecakes, quiche, muffins and croissants all made without any dairy or animal products. No butter, no eggs, no milk. (They also do some gluten-free versions of their vegan goodies, though that is not their main emphasis.)

I stopped in this morning and picked up a few treats, though in general I'm dubious about baked goods without butter. And quiche without eggs?

(Photo: Polly Campbell)

But these are much better than just adequate for vegans. The bourbon chocolate cherry cupcake was delicious, with the boozy cherry tucked down into the white cake, topped with a mild chocolate frosting; not too much. The grapefruit and poppyseed cupcake, with frosting tinted delicately pink with Campari, was a nice variation of lemon-poppyseed.

The brownie is very dense, very fudgy – the one I picked up today is topped with caramelized pineapple.

And the quiche? The crust is rather delicious, crunchy and flaky, which is what you get with all vegetable shortening, and though the filling doesn't have that quivery, custard-like texture of the best quiche, it's very tasty and gives the same experience as eating a quiche.

(Photo: Polly Campbell)

In fact, if you eat eggs and milk all the time and don't care about your desserts being vegan, you might still very much enjoy Happy Chicks for their out-there flavors. Cakes and cupcakes come in flavors like key lime-rose or Marrakech carrot, mojito, ginger chai and orange ginger. They do a lavender agave pear tart, a strawberry basil pie, and Chinese 5-spice breakfast rolls.

They hope to open with a lunch menu in a few months, once they've got the bakery running perfectly. They still take orders for larger amounts, a few days to a week ahead.